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28 October 2016

Share a picture 28 Oct 2016


Today was a day without pressing needs other than to get out and enjoy.  I need to have one of these every so often.  Sometimes I let it go too long before I allow myself the opportunity to hit my reset button.  If it goes too long it starts to wear on me and I am not at my best.  When this happens, I know that it doesn't just affect me but it affects those around me and those I love.  My loved ones deserve to have me at my best so I try to remain mindful and take the time to do as Stephen R Covey says and 'sharpen the saw'.

Part of that ritual for me is to take the time to smell the roses as it were, (or the next best thing if there are no roses around).  If I put a little effort into it I can take much pleasure in some of the simple things in life.  Today it was a flower that caught my eye on this overcast day doing its best to shine before the days turn completely to winter and hide its beauty under a layer of snow.



This did the trick and for the rest of the day there was beauty all around.  It isn't about knowing where to look, it is just a matter of looking.  If I would just bother to remember to do a little looking every day, I am pretty sure it wouldn't always feel like it has been a long time in between, mostly because it wouldn't be.

See the beauty around you.  This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

21 October 2016

“Every master was once a disaster” - David T.S. Wood


I am a fan of David T.S. Wood.  He has a few different podcast out there and I have enjoyed ever one I have listened to.  He has an interesting back story for his life and has overcome many obstacles that have been the excuses of other lesser men.  He has worked in the network marketing field and become a motivational speaker and trainer of some renown.  He is worth looking up.

The above quote is a simple one that when I first heard it I lightly past over it without fully appreciating its genius.  I have reflected on it a lot since that time.

If I can suggest one thing to anyone that has been struggling with finding and defining their place in the world it is that "Every master was once a disaster".

Know that where you are now is not where you will be tomorrow just as it is not where you were yesterday.

Realize that anyone that is at the top of their field did not start out there.  No one.

At birth all start with a clean slate.  Any skill, knowledge, talent had to be earned.

Granted some are born into situations that provide easier paths or more apparent opportunities.  Some have life handed to them on a platter.  Some are given honorary degrees and noble prizes (sp) for unrelated causes but that is not the way of the master.  The master is not the master because of what others say or think.  The master just is.

There is a path the master must take and the point that it starts from is the point where the master was once a disaster.  The master found their path and then followed it through with whatever it took to become the master they were meant to be.

And so can you.  Find your path.  Set your goal.  Make the commitment.  Let nothing stand in your way.  Do what it takes.  Become the master you wish to be.  Start today.  Continue today.  Work forward today.  You have the same right as any other to become the master you want to be.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

20 October 2016

Is it just me or is there way too many people speaking Valley talk on TV?


It seems like I am hearing more and more people on TV talking like Valley girls with all the included timing, syllable emphasis and accents that were so noticeable decades ago.  It is so like gag me with a spoon.

It might not be the over the top annoying chatter teens used to use and others made fun of but it is still present albeit in a lighter version.  I still find it annoying. I also still do a fair version of it when I want to make fun of something.

I hope I haven't spoiled your favorite TV show because you will now be looking for it or at least subconsciously noticing it around you.  From HGTV to CBS it rears it's ugly head and after an involuntary cringe I reach for the remote, because I can't take it in large doses, fur sure.

Maybe its just a fad.  I sure hope so.  This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

19 October 2016

Way to go General Mills


I just saw a commercial for General Mills that got me excited.

"Do you mean the same General Mills that makes famous cereals such as Cheerios, Chex, Wheaties, and Lucky Charms as well as others?"  "Do you mean that General Mills?"

"Yep, that General Mills."

"But why would a commercial from General Mills get you excited?"

"Well, let me tell you."

The commercial starts off by telling you that whole grain is the first ingredient in all Big G cereals and although that sounds like something that should be noteworthy if you read the nutrition label you would expect there to be a greater level of dietary fiber listed and it seems pretty low by comparison.  So no that is not the part that got me excited.

It is the next thing they mention that really got me excited.  Their cereals contain No High Fructose Corn Syrup.  O happy days.

I still think that HFCS or high fructose corn syrup is slow poison that creates long term negative health impacts that we still don't fully understand but that we will pay for in the years to come.  There are a lot of web sites out there that discuss HFCS, and if you haven't run across the topic you might find it an interesting research project, but from what I have seen I have serious concerns about it and have personally taken to reading ingredient labels and actively avoided foods many times because of the presence of HFCS.

And now to see yet another major company using the tag of "No HFCS" as a way to promote their product makes me think that the movement is gaining some traction and is moving forward.

There are other companies that have seen this as an opportunity and others will follow.  Whether this is an honest effort on behalf of their customers' welfare or a marketing ploy like being a 'green' company I don't know but I will take it.  I really hope the movement will continue to grow.  To me this is bigger and more important than peanut allergies, glutton scares and organic labeling.

General Mills I hear you and applaud you.  Hey Coke and Pepsi and all you other soda makers, are you listening?  It is time to get real.  Hansen's Soda is the real deal.  I know Pepsi has made throwback soda and I look for it.  To get a real Coke you have to look for an import from Mexico at three times the price.  Really?  It is time to get with the program.  If for no other reason than that real sugar just taste better than laboratory created substitutes that slowly kill you.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

18 October 2016

I hate teasers


Teasers are those lousy, misleading sound bites and headlines that are designed specifically to entice you to stay tuned or click a link only to be disappointed by the lack of substance that follows.

News shows used to be the worst by stating things like 'research shows that most homes contain an item in your kitchen that could make you very sick and possibly kill you.  We'll let you know what it is after this break' and then they cut to a commercial and you can't wait for them to get back only to learn that if you have the same sponge sitting on your sink for the past 13 months that it might grow some bacteria that might not be the best for you...duh.

The practice has grown beyond any semblance of sensibility on the web.  Sites like MSN and Yahoo have taken this to a whole new level of ridiculous and then they double down with their advertising links from the likes of Taboola.  (By the way if you see any advertisement by Taboola I suggest that you ignore it completely and do not click it even if you think it might be legit as I have never, ever found anything of value associated with them.)  They use titles that sound like something but are really nothing.  They are designed to draw you in but never deliver.  The term for this is click bait.

Yes click bait, just like the bait you find on a hook used to lure a fish to latch on and lose its life thus becoming someone elses' dinner.

They always take a popular subject (and there is always something to choose from) and allude to the possibility of having some new information about said subject or update about your fan favorites.  And then you sucker in only to realize that the only purpose they had was to sucker you in.  The web site they link to may have something to do with said subject (but many times it does not) because the real intent is to overwhelm the viewer with ads in the hope of getting the viewer to act on the ads or at the very least expose you to even more ads.

Even though the percentage of views that actually convert to a buy are probably very, very small it must still be profitable because we continue to be exposed to so much of it.  The cost to load millions upon millions of these ads is less than the revenue they see from their efforts or they wouldn't bother.

And there is a lot of them bothering with it.  It feels like 99% of all these ads are of this nature.  (I am pretty sure it is only 98.9% but I don't have the statistics to prove it.)  And you wonder why we have gotten so good at ignoring ads, whatever they are or wherever come from.

It amazes me that the advertising industry can be this big and spend so much money and have so little concern for their customers or reputations of the companies they represent.  It is so hard to find quality or excellence in advertising on the internet, print or broadcast let alone memorable moments or anything worthy of water cooler discussions.

Even when we want to like and talk about ads and try to make them a main topic of focus as big as the event they are tied to such as the Super Bowl, where the biggest and brightest culminate all their skill and effort into creating the hoped for viral adoration of millions to justify their fees, we can still be disappointed.

As someone who enjoys and prefers the advertising driven content over the paid subscription business model, I am left wondering what the future will bring.  I believe that the volume of advertising to content has driven much of the subscription market where you pay for the content to be ad free.  We have gone from a show that was sponsored by a company that mentioned the sponsors name in the show to a few well spaced and placed ad interruptions but with the majority of the shows hour being content, and now having longer and more frequent interruptions where the content barely covers the majority of the hour.  When a 96 minute movie takes 3 hours of broadcast time you know something is messed up.  No wonder TiVo became so popular with it's ability to skip ahead past the commercials.

And if the quality of the commercials continues to fall off across the board, then you know a vacuum will develop and that means opportunities for those who are willing to offer an alternative to fill that vacuum.  You see it happening already when you see how many have left local radio for internet and satellite broadcast and the big move from cable to internet sourced TV.

The content has to be pretty incredible to overcome what advertisement is doing to it.  That is asking a lot given the current state of programming.  Changes are coming and I am hoping for good things to come from it.  Actually I am counting on it.  I am always looking for a better way.  Let's hope we get it.  This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

17 October 2016

Which presidential election are you watching?


Okay so I wanted to watch the last presidential debate but once again I found myself among others that just weren't as interested in the political process as I was.  Rather than creating a confrontational environment I thought it best to just go with the flow and try to catch the highlights or low-lights as the case may be after the fact.

I don't usually like to watch political events second hand i.e. through sound bites and talking heads' opinionated selective reporting because it is hard to get the full story let alone the real story but, if that is the only option, you take what you can get.

News however has a shelf life.  Some stories have shorter shelf lives than others.  Before I was able to see a much about the debate it was no longer being talked about.

One of the things I found most interesting is the amount of actual news coverage given not to the actual debate but the satire versions done by Saturday Night Live.  I know this is nothing new and really shouldn't be unexpected, not when a normal part of the political coverage involves a review of the late night talk show monologues to share the jokes from the night before.  It is about ratings after all and if pretend delivers better than reality, what's the problem.

So I get one more chance to watch the head to head to missing heads (there really should be more heads at these debates).  Wednesday should be good for me.  Nothing scheduled, wife busy at her volunteer job, no weather emergencies planned and it should all happen before my bedtime.  There is no guarantee that there wont be some intruding phone calls though.

Halloween season is here and The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror is allowed to air before November this year thanks to favorable football scheduling.  What better reason to spend some time watching the most fear inducing event we can create in this country.  If you aren't scared now you aren't paying attention.

Maybe I shouldn't be allowed to watch this all alone in an empty house with no one there to hold my hand and tell me it's okay and everything will be all right.  Maybe its not too late to arrange to watch Big Bang Theory reruns with friends instead.  Ah that's okay, I'll just make sure to leave the lights on.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

16 October 2016

Chuck Todd must go


I have watched 'Meet the Press' for many, many years.  Perhaps I should say I used to watch 'Meet the Press' but I can't really stomach it much anymore.

Tim Russert gave the show the legitimacy that it needed as a valued news program.  Then he passed away from a sudden coronary thrombosis on June 13, 2008.  It was a great loss.  Not just of a good man but of a good political show.

It was also a great loss for NBC.  Their news program collectively is crap.  It is totally biased, nonobjective and non journalistic.  They maybe able to convince themselves that they have integrity but it only exist within the minds of their own small group of bobbing heads sitting around their round table discussions.

When Chuck Todd is the cream that raises to the top of your cup and is considered the best choice to take control of the most prestigious political show on your network then you have a serious credibility, integrity and believability crisis in what is usually the core strength of any national network and that is its' news coverage.  Without that you are sitting on a chair that is missing one of its' legs, all wobble and little comfort.

Of course the other networks don't have any better bragging power.  Chris Wallace on Fox and George Stephanopoulos on ABC (and who does CBS have I can't recall); what have any of them got to offer?  Where does a person turn to get real, unbiased, objective, true journalistic news?

I recently did a survey about this years political election coverage and the type of questions and multiple answer format was interesting.  It gave me the impression that they do not get it either.

I don't think that anyone with a more than passing interest in politics and the election is able to get all the information they need from one source.  Not legitimately anyway.  I also don't believe that any reporting is complete and unbiased enough to accept one version, and that it requires several different versions and much reading between the lines to get a more complete picture of any given topic.  It cannot be done by visiting only one site.  It takes effort.  Sometimes a lot of effort.  You might not find it worth the effort.  Many don't.

As the noise gets louder and more voluminous it is good to install filters that cut out the worst of the worst and ensure that the sites and sources with little or no value added are cut from your view.  Shove it to the peripherals or off the screen entirely.

And that is where Chuck Todd belongs.  I have added him to my automatic 'switch the channel' list.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

Amazon ratings warning


I had heard a comment about this before concerning the Amazon Fire Phone where the ratings started out on the rough side and later when they were trying to clear out the old stock with a sale, they cleared the star ratings and basically started over in an attempt to get a better star rating.  I saw this but wondered if it had anything to do with the phone being pulled from the market for a period before giving it one more effort.  They brought it out with a much better price and threw in a year of Amazon Prime for less than half the original introductory price.

If this was merely a second attempt to market the phone and/or a version 2.0 of the phone, then it would make sense to make this the equivalent of a new product and deserving of a new star rating but if it was not, and the fact that they were still listing a rather large number of total reviews given just days after the reset, then they were playing games.

I have read others mention that this was happening and for items other than just the Fire Phone but didn't take a lot of heed.  I couldn't believe, or didn't want to believe that Amazon would do this.  Besides this seemed like a numbers game that others might play but not our tried and true Amazon.

Then I got an e-mail that talks about saving big on Xfinity Internet.  Always looking for a deal I clicked to see and was met with the opening visual:













At first glance it doesn't look too bad other than the price is kind of high for a measly 25 Mbps and excluding equipment, install, taxes and fees.  Go faster and it gets worse.  Still it looks like 916 customers have given it an average of 4 stars.  Pretty good by normal ratings standards.  Remember that on a scale of 1 to 5 the median is 3 and not half of 5 or 2.5.

Now after the first impression, you being the savvy shopper you are, you look down the screen to see what some of those reviews actually say and then com across this:


Initially it is still looking good.  Sure 3.8 is not the full 4 stars that it shows being filled in but 3.8 is still a good way to the higher side of middle ground.  But wait a minute.  86% of the 916 reviewers gave it a one star.  If you have read many reviews you will know that the only reason for some to give a one star review is because they have no way to give them a zero star review.

So let's do some math.  Don't worry, I will keep it simple.
916 * 86% = 788 then times 1 equals 788
916 * 2%  = 18 then times 2 equals 36
916 * 2% = 18 then times 3 equals 54
916 * 2% = 18 then times 4 equals 72
916 * 8% = 73 then times 5 equals 365

Double check 788+18+18+18+73 = 915  within one is better than government.
Now add 788+36+54+72+365= 1,315 for total stars given

so that means if we take the total stars and divide by the number of reviews we should get the real star rating of 1,315/916 = 1.435589519650655 or rounded out to 1.4 stars.  By the way, even if I throw in the extra person to make it a full 916 and give the benefit of the doubt that the missing count would have given a full 5 stars the number still rounds to 1.4 (1.441048034934498 to be exact).

Wait a minute, they calculated it to be 3.8 and rounded it to 4 when filling out the stars to display.  What gives Amazon?  Real math doesn't even come up to half that amount.

Is this just really bad math, somebody falling asleep at the wheel, or are you playing games because you have a deal going with Xfinity that is paying you to push their product on your web site and through you customer's via their e-mails.  If the later, then this is major league bogus, deceptive and fraudulent and should be beneath you or any business that desires to deal from a place of integrity.  If this is an innocent mistake then you have got other problems that need to be addressed and corrected quickly.

I understand that stuff can happen, typos occur and sometimes mistakes are just that.  If it starts to happen often or you start to hear examples coming from more than a few minor sources, it may indicate a trend or a change in policy that may negatively impact the relationship between a company and its customers.  I am not ready to make the call just yet because I have had a pretty good relationship with Amazon myself but this is worth watching to see where it goes form here.  If I were an investor looking at the company, I would definitely want to know more.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

13 October 2016

Pick your Poison...

...would you like arsenic or cyanide?

Is that a crazy question or does it seem reasonable?  Would you like more information?  Is the  poison for a big animal or a small animal.  Is the poison meant for me or perhaps for someone else?  If the poison is meant for me or for those I love and respect, why am I facing this question?  Why is it an either/or question in the first place?  Surely there must be an alternative answer.

There should at least be an alternative question such as which ice cream would you like, vanilla or chocolate?  Who cares either way it is still ice cream.  (The correct answer to that one is of course yes.)  And in case you hadn't noticed it by now, ice cream comes in way more than two flavors and with very few exceptions they are all ice cream and you have a high probability of having an enjoyable experience with any choice you make.

So how in the world did our country get itself into this mess?  Like most of our sporting events we reduce the competitors to two teams for the finals but this time we really did get the two biggest losers.  Sad part is we knew this about them before we got to this point.  The signs were all there long before anyone even decided to start campaigning.  How could a reasonable person not see them for who and what they are?

And as for the original question, how could a reasonable person be expected to answer it?  How do you make a logical choice in an illogical world?

Perhaps it would be better to change the question entirely.  Perhaps we would be better off changing the way the game is played and refuse to be stuck in a lose lose proposition.

In track and field the final race is not between two individuals but between a field of the fastest and best individuals.  Here is an idea worth pursuing, open up your field and let the others in.  I mean really open up the field and go beyond the few side shows the media has been willing to mention a few times in the effort to appear to be journalist.

I am saying that this is the year to stand for something and not just take action to be against something.  If you honestly like one of the choices you have been given that take it and bare the consequences.  But, if you like one of the earlier candidates then write them in.  If you didn't like any of the candidates at all and would much rather have someone else you know would represent you better then write them in.  If you think that a dead comedian would do a better job than the current bunch then write them in.  (I am sure that Pat Paulsen would love the attention and always showed more common sense than the average politician.)  Just make sure you know the rules for write in candidates for your voting area or the rules of the game will get you thrown out.

'But Ed, doesn't that mean I will just be throwing away my vote?'

You don't think it is thrown away already?

What better time than now to make a statement and stand for something?  In the movies when the good guy is presented with a 'pick your poison' question he usually reacts by spitting in the questioners face.  You can at least respect him for that.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.